EVH 5150 III 50 Watt Fender Head Demo And Short Review

So I borrowed a buddies EVH 5150 III 50 Watt head a couple of weeks ago. I was excited, as a former original 5150 and 6505+ owner, I knew what I was getting into and pretty much expected it to be a variation of some of the same. I expected a mid-rangy tight sounding decent head. Think Soldano which if i’m not mistaken the earlier Peavey 5150’s were modeled around a Soldano. (PS I freaking love Soldano) Now being that this is a Fender product, I was interested for a few reasons. Mostly, they’re not known for high gain heads. They did have the old tone masters that could get up and rip, but not a head that i’m aware of that was a real melter.

When my buddy loaned it to me, he basically said don’t boost it in the front. Which is generally a must for a large amount of tube heads. Not because most tube heads don’t have enough gain, but I would say most don’t have enough usable gain. So you boost it in the front to keep it from getting messy. You still get gain but its tight. This head needs no boost. I ran the gain stage on the red channel around 4 and it was plenty. I ran nothing more than an iSP Decimator and not because it’s a noisy head but because I like tight gate separation when I play as a personal choice.

Anyway, I’m going to write up a full blurb about it when i’m done, I’m going to do a demo walk thru video and also an Axe Fx 2 Tone Matching vid. But again, I think this head is must have.

Later

GearZombie